evolution

Lightning strikes may have supplied a key ingredient that allowed life to emerge on early Earth, according to a new study of "fossilized" lightning.

Researchers combed Vatican archives to find records of how ancient church policies restricting whom one could marry shaped Western values and family structures today.

Move over, fruit flies, rats and zebrafish. Squid and octopuses have elaborate brains and behaviors, and scientists say studying them in the laboratory could yield important biological insights.

Humans are evolutionary oddballs for living long past our reproductive prime. New research explains how grandmothers might be the reason why.

A new theory claims that shared child care and food were the original secrets of our species' success.

What made us human might have had less to do with men out hunting, and a lot more to do with what was going on at home — with grandmas and babies.

Modern birds are dinosaurs without toothy jaws, and with bigger brains. Newly published research fills in some of the missing links in their evolution.

Though natural selection might have sculpted a well-adapted species on another planet, they wouldn't look like us, says guest blogger Jonathan Losos.

When Turkish children head back to school, something will be missing from their textbooks: any mention of evolution. The government is phasing in what it calls a values-based curriculum.

The new bill was pushed by a conservative group critical of the way evolution, climate change and government were being taught in Florida schools.

A new study suggests that diet had a big influence in driving the evolution of brain size in primates. Monkeys who thrive on fruit have bigger brains than their plant eating neighbors.